Sub-diffractional volume-confined polaritons in the natural hyperbolic material hexagonal boron nitride

By Joshua D. Caldwell, A. Kretinin, Yiguo Chen, Vincenzo Giannini, M. Fogler, Y. Francescato, C. T. Ellis, J. Tischler, C. Woods, A. Giles and 5 more. Nature Communications, 2014

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Strongly anisotropic media, where the principal components of the dielectric tensor have opposite signs, are called hyperbolic. Such materials exhibit unique nanophotonic properties enabled by the highly directional propagation of slow-light modes localized at deeply sub-diffractional length scales. While artificial hyperbolic metamaterials have been demonstrated, they suffer from high plasmonic losses and require complex nanofabrication, which in turn induces size-dependent limitations on optical confinement. The low-loss, mid-infrared, natural hyperbolic material hexagonal boron nitride is an attractive alternative. Here we report on three-dimensionally confined ‘hyperbolic polaritons’ in boron nitride nanocones that support four series (up to the seventh order) modes in two spectral bands. The resonant modes obey the predicted aspect ratio dependence and exhibit high-quality factors (Q up to 283) in the strong confinement regime (up to λ/86). These observations assert hexagonal boron nitride as a promising platform for studying novel regimes of light–matter interactions and nanophotonic device engineering. Hyperbolic metamaterials exhibit interesting optical phenomena that could provide useful functionalities, if the losses can be reduced. Here Caldwell et al.show that hexagonal boron nitride supports hyperbolic polaritons, presenting a natural alternative to metamaterial systems.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Civil and Structural Engineering, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2e35bea60ad896cf757835a7b1d14615eb102772

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Citations in the corpus

Why all the fuss about 2D semiconductors? (2016, background): “recently shown strongly three-dimensionally confined ‘hyperbolic polaritons’ (confinements of up to λ/86) and exhibit high-quality factors (Q up to 283).(19) Therefore, these phonon-polariton modes in boron nitride can have a strong impact in nanophotonics to confine radiation to a very small length”
Phonon-polaritonics: enabling powerful capabilities for infrared photonics (2019, background): “On the other hand, particle PhPs observed in hBN nanocones [113, 118] exhibit an extraordinary electricfield landscape with “hot-rings” at deep-subwavelength distances on the nanocone surface (see Figure 21B).”
Polaritons in layered two-dimensional materials. (2016, background): “Because of the optical phonon origin of PhPs, these modes are observed in the THz to mid-infrared spectral ranges[25], as summarized in Fig.”